“What has happened?”
“The signal! But… it’s a rescue signal. And very close to us.”
There was no true rescue signal—setting the grassland on fire in panic and hoping someone would notice was the “rescue signal” of the Merseh Steppe. It wasn’t used lightly, for obvious reasons.
“But there is still so much rainwater left on the ground…” Yuma rationalized, but the western sky was indeed filled with smoke, the early light of morning tinting the smoke blue.
“I don’t know what has happened. It could simply be wildfire. How many herders should be sent?”
“A wildfire this big when it’s this wet…” Yuma shook her head. “That would be a problem in its own right. Gather six, including yourself. I will go with you.”
“Go with us, Chief? But the danger—”
“It can’t be more dangerous than confronting the Grim King.” Yuma tried a smile, which seemed to reassure Aidan a little as he returned it and ran off, saying he would bring her a horse. She almost told him to bring Falco, then remembered how the monster had killed the stallion. Too many things had happened that night. Only when Aidan brought the horse to her and her eyes fell on its auburn hide did she remember that she had picked Aston the night she met the Grim King.
She mounted Aston. Her side still ached, but riding a horse and feeling the wind on her face for the first time in days made her forget her pain. As she rode, riders joined her, tipping their hats to her. If she hadn’t been galloping toward a possible disaster, she would’ve simply been happy.
They rode for about an hour before heat hit their faces and curtain-like smoke heralded a sizable amount of grassland going up in flames.
“Isn’t that Barund?” a sharp-eyed herder shouted, recognizinga shadow behind a leaping flame. Yuma kicked, and Aston picked up speed, the wind whipping her face stronger than ever. Her hat flew off and hung behind her neck by its string. She leaned forward, giving herself to the momentum.
It would take too long to go around the flames, and who knew what would happen if they did. Yuma could feel Aston’s fear, but she stroked his neck at his brave, unceasing gallop, and squeezed the horse with her thighs right as they reached the flames. Aston did not hesitate for a second as he leaped over the fire, the flames licking at Yuma’s calves. Yuma and Aston flew through the smoke and fire and landed on the other side.
Barund stood there, an old hand at thirty-three. He must’ve experienced everything there was to experience on the grasslands. Egan and Trudie must have as well, who were with him now. That was why Yuma had sent them out in the first search party. But what she saw before her was something neither Barund nor Yuma, or any other herder of Danras, had ever seen before.
There was a giant box of gleaming silver standing on four spindly legs, dwarfing Aston and Yuma with its height. The box had metallic, whip-like arms with pincers that threatened the herders. One of the pincers had grabbed Trudie by the ankle and was dangling her upside down. Trudie struggled, but there was nothing she could do in that position.
The horses were gone. Judging by Aston’s extreme revulsion, Yuma could guess they had run away from this unknown thing.
“Barund! Egan! Trudie!”
Only then did Barund and Egan realize their Chief Herder had come, and their eyes lit up. Even Trudie waved her arms in her direction. Barund shouted, “Chief! We found the spy!”
“That box?”
“No, beneath it!”
Under the giant’s body was a hammock-like net, sagging like the stomach of a pregnant horse. It looked rather makeshift, compared to the shining, riveted giant that was obviously the result of expert craftsmanship. Yuma realized there was a man lying in the net, wearing some kind of metal frame all around his body. He looked unconscious, or maybe dead. This was the spy from the Empire in the west? Yuma unhitched her crossbow from Aston’s saddle and took aim at the person under the belly of the giant.
The thing seemed to understand her movement. Lowering its belly and shielding the person in the net with one arm, it charged at Yuma.
10
EMERE
“You may not, my prince! You would have to beat me to death with that walking stick before I let you pass!”
Difri refused to be persuaded. He was convinced Emere would be assassinated the moment he stepped out of the door, and Difri’s face was more wrinkled than ever as he grimaced, grabbing firmly on to his coat.
Difri had been like this as long as he could remember, not just to him, but to his siblings and his parents as well. But Emere had just returned to him after twenty years of self-imposed exile. Perhaps in the old butler’s mind Emere remained a princeling, liable to scrape his knee whenever he went out.
“The streets are filled with people!” Emere reasoned. “What harm could possibly come to me?”
In Emere’s pocket was a clay imprint of the insignia on the assassin’s sword. What he had told Difri was that he simply wanted to investigate the attempt on his own life. But that wasn’t the onlything on his mind. What if the failed assassination attempt wasn’t a simple coincidence? What if it was somehow connected to his dream vision? He couldn’t stop thinking of what Loran had said in the vision.
Youmust become king. That is your destiny. Destiny passes by those who stand still. Reach out and grasp that which awaits you, up there.
When he first heard those words, he had thought of his youth wandering the world, searching for a way to fight the Empire. Ever since the battle against the Imperial forces in Arland, Emere had thought his time was now past, and so he had gladly accepted his sister’s passing of the torch in the Capital. Then, Loran said that there was something to reach out for, somewhere out there. That was what he hoped to find by tracking down the assassin.
